1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to location determination technology and, more particularly, to a location correction apparatus and method that are capable of improving the accuracy of obtained location information.
2. Description of the Related Art
Location determination technology (or positioning technology) for mobile terminals is technology for determining the current location of a mobile terminal. As such location determination technology, a network-based location determination scheme or a terminal-based positioning scheme has been mainly used, wherein the network-based location determination scheme determines a location using a reception signal, received by a mobile terminal from a base station, and the terminal-based positioning scheme determines the location using a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver mounted on a mobile terminal.
Further, location determination technology for mobile terminals is also implemented using a method of creating a fingerprint corresponding to signal intensity in a wireless Local Area Network (LAN) environment, mapping the created fingerprint to the Radio Frequency (RF) value of a radio signal in the mobile terminal, and determining the location of the mobile terminal.
However, the above-described location determination methods for mobile terminals are disadvantageous in that there is a positioning error due to the influence of fading caused by buildings or the like in a downtown area having a large number of multistoried buildings.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,816,111 discloses technology for correcting a received location based on values belonging to a set of estimated errors for signals of a GPS provided in a mobile terminal. However, the above patent is limited in the correction of the positioning errors because only GPS signals are corrected based on estimated error values for the GPS signals.
Therefore, a method capable of more accurately correcting determined location information is required.